The European trip the rules will change again in 2025, giving seemingly more protection to big names as a significant ProTour advantage is removed.
The top 16 players in the main Order of Merit who automatically entered the 2024 tournaments will now automatically advance to Round Two, so players such as Van Gerwen, Littler, Humphries and in particular Nathan Aspinall, who is currently unable to qualify for The World Championship Grand Prix and other major tournaments will get multiple bites of the cherry to qualify without taking part in the Players Championship series.
Instead, the top 16 ProTour players will be seeded in round one, so it will consist of the 32 pre-qualified players (the top 16 from the main Order of Merit and the 16 highest placed in the ProTour, plus the 16 players from the qualifiers. The top 16 placed in the Order of Merit rankings will be exempt and seeded in the second round, where they will face 16 of the remaining 32.
One drawing pool will consist of the 16 ProTour Order of Merit qualifiers and one pool will consist of the remaining 16 unseeded qualifiers. This was also likely done for a blanket for Premier League stars who had to travel on Thursday evening to get to Friday’s European Tour events, meaning they won’t arrive until Saturday like a ProTour player has done in the past.
It’s a move that has already sparked debate on social media and will likely continue to do so as the European Tour continues to diverge from its original model in 2025.
This year, the European Tour route will change once again. The top 16 players from the Main Order of Merit will be seeded in the second round this year (instead of the top 16 from the Pro Tour), and the top 16 from the Pro Tour will be seeded in the first round.
More protection for the big boys. Sigh. pic.twitter.com/xRzwqvJkC2
— Jetze Jan Idsardi (@JJIdsardi) January 13, 2025
